RPI Day 4: Guided Reading (& Comprehension)

 Background to Guided Reading

The guided reading approach (and Running records) are from the work of Dame Marie Clay in the 1960s.  Others have taken her approach and expanded it into what we know it to be today. The aim of guided reading is to teach students how to engage in the strategic actions they need to process an increasingly complex range of texts. The aim for responsive teaching of 1-2 points (e.g. a processing skill, a strategy) based on observation and need. The Fountas and Pinell Litaracy Continuum has a great framework outlining guided reading.

Introducing Texts and Purposes

Before Reading:

Observing for Responsive Teaching

Using the “Listening to Reading” Observation form when in a guided reading session is a great way to gain insight into recurring patterns with specific students while reading. Here are five specific areas to monitor while observing.  A great suggestion is to use different colour pens when observing to indicate different texts over time or different observation days.

When conducting a post observation analysis (between two students or one student over time), this chart is amazing! I often stick to generically saying these things, but I don’t always break it down this much. This is definitely something that I will be using more when observing students while reading. 

Once we have done an observation (over time), it is important to share back with the learner/group to provide targeted feedback that you are going to focus their learning on in the near future. 

Fluency

I’m looking forward to using the fluency rubric with students. I am curious to see how they think they are reading compared to my impression. What a great tool to use with students as an independent reading task. 

After Reading

These examples of Comprehension Taxonomy is such a great reminder and point of reflection when thinking about how I am leading the discussion of my reading groups, and how I am organising their follow up tasks based on their learning goals with comprehension. 

Activating Prior Knowledge

**At this point, RPI was cancelled due to the torrential rain/flooding that hit Auckland. The notes below are my own reflections after looking through the material from the remainder of the day on my own. 

This session is something that I think I already do quite well (most of the time). I am constantly thinking about where that access point is for my students with the texts that I select and how to actively provide opportunities for them to discuss how they connect with a topic or text. 

In reflection about this, I really think it has to do with how obvious it is that many of the PM kit texts that we use to test our students (using running records) are not always texts that allow our students to activate their prior knowledge (or to be considered mirrored texts). 

When looking at Reading Comprehension strategies, I was reminded of Making Connections. I really feel that this is one area that I don’t always introduce to my Year 4 readers, but I am interested in exploring it more further as the year progresses. 

RPI: Text Selection

 After learning about the importance of text selection, and hearing at a school level PD the importance of working with mixed ability groups, my teaching partner and I came up with this reading lesson for Week 3 that went along with the Narrative Text sets and elements of a Narrative writing lessons we had been focusing on. 

After two weeks focusing on the elements of a narrative (Setting, characters, problem/conflict, resolution), during week 3 we shifted our focus to thinking primarily about the main characters of the stories we were reading. Students read two texts in their reading groups (for this Year 4 group Long, Long Night and Flight of the Albatross). Then, after some discussion with their reading group, I read aloud "Aroha's Way". 

"Aroha's Way" is a story that our students are familiar with as we use it (and previously used it last year) for our Mitey (wellness) lessons. Only this time, instead of focusing on the emotions and feelings of Aroha page by page, we looked at Aroha as the whole person. 

Students then broke off into mixed ability groups to complete a JamBoard activity (link on slide) sharing 3 things about the main character in one of the stories their group read during the past week. Groups were then able to choose the characteristics from the characters from their JamBoards to create their own avatar using a program linked on the site. 

It was great seeing students come to life and share in their groups about the character they were introduced to in their texts over the past week. My students reading at Levels 3-9 of the reading programme were able to engage with their peers reading at Levels 24-26 about the texts they were reading in a way that they could all benefit from each other.